Wise Quotes about Longings

Ask why this task is on your to-do list.
Consider discarding those items to which
you are not truly committed.
For the tasks which do speak
to the longings of your own heart,
begin now, today, this moment.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Don't Wait!
Start on your dreams, your impulses,
your longings, your special occasions today.
Because this is your moment.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

I hear many people talk about their longing for a balanced life.
What I think they are really expressing
is a desire for a life with less pressure.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Deep in my heart I'm concealing things
that I'm longing to say.
Scared to confess what I'm feeling -
frightened you'll slip away.
- the movie Evita

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices,
a rottenness begins in his conduct.
- Thomas Jefferson

Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul.
It is daily admission of one's weakness.
It is better in prayer to have a heart without words
than words without a heart.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

One does not discover new lands without consenting
to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
- Andre Gide

Not everything that casts a long shadow is to be feared.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Everything deep is also simple
and can be reproduced simply
as long as its reference
to the whole truth is maintained.
But what matters is not what is witty
but what is true.
- Albert Schweitzer

Give me a lever long enough
and a fulcrum on which to place it,
and I shall move the world.
- Archimedes

Three things cannot be long hidden:
the sun, the moon, and the truth.
- The Buddha

There are risks and costs to action.
But they are far less than the long range
risks of comfortable inaction.
- John F. Kennedy

Just smiling goes a long way toward
making you feel better about life.
And when you feel better about life, your life is better.
- Art Linkletter

When one door closes, another opens.
But often we look so long, so regretfully,
upon the closed door,
that we fail to see the one that is opened for us.
- Helen Keller

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at.
Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
- Henry David Thoreau

How you think when you lose
determines how long it will be until you win.
- Gilbert (G. K.) Chesterton

Don't take rejection personally.
Don't let someone else's bad day spoil your day.
As long as you never reject yourself, you'll be fine.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

In order to discover new lands,
one must be willing to lose sight
of the shore for a very long time.
- Anonymous

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves.
The process never ends until we die.
And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

We are not afraid to follow truth
wherever it may lead,
nor to tolerate any error
so long as reason is left free to combat it.
- Thomas Jefferson

It had long since come to my attention
that people of accomplishment
rarely sat back and let things happen to them.
They went out and happened to things.
- Leonardo da Vinci

The good news is that you aren't
as important as you thought you were.
Relax. The weight of the world
is not on your shoulders.
Take a day off.
Go for a long silent walk in the woods.
The world will still be there tomorrow -
as good and as bad as ever.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

As long as a man stands in his own way,
everything seems to be in his way.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Make your important choices in life
based on your values and your long-term objectives
rather than on a need for approval.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Avoiding danger is no safer
in the long run than outright exposure.
The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
- Helen Keller

I long to accomplish a great and noble task,
but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks
as if they were great and noble.
- Helen Keller

Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour
when every one has to throw off his mask?
Do you believe that life will always let itself be mocked?
Do you think you can slip away a little before midnight
in order to avoid this? Or are you not terrified by it?
I have seen men in real life who so long deceived others
that at last their true nature could not reveal itself;...
In every man there is something which to a certain degree
prevents him from becoming perfectly transparent to himself;
and this may be the case in so high a degree,
he may be so inexplicably woven into relationships of life
which extend far beyond himself that he almost cannot reveal himself.
But he who cannot reveal himself cannot love,
and he who cannot love is the most unhappy man of all.
- Soren Kierkegaard

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along,
because once I have persuaded him, he will stick.
If I scare him, he will stay just as long
as he is scared, and then he is gone.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words
but rather short, easy words like "What about lunch?"
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains,
at the huge waves of the sea,
at the long courses of rivers,
at the vast compass of the ocean,
at the circular motion of the stars;
and they pass by themselves without wondering.
- St. Augustine

For as long as I can remember, I've been searching for something,
some reason why we're here. What are we doing here? Who are we?
If this is a chance to find out
even just a little part of that answer...
I don't know, I think it's worth a human life. Don't you?
- the Jodie Foster movie Contact (1997)

So long as we are loved by others,
I would almost say that we are indispensable;
and no man is useless while he has a friend.
- Robert Louis Stevenson

Every good relationship, especially marriage, is based on respect.
If it's not based on respect,
nothing that appears to be good will last very long.
- Amy Grant

As long as any adult thinks that he,
like the parents and teachers of old,
can become introspective,
invoking his own youth to understand
the youth before him,
he is lost.
- Margaret Mead

Time to Die:
A Zen teacher had a rare and priceless teacup.
One day, his precocious student accidentally broke the cup.
Hearing the footsteps of his teacher,
the student held the pieces of the cup behind his back.
When the master appeared, he asked: "Why do people have to die?"
"This is natural," explained the teacher.
"Everything has to die and has just so long to live."
The student showed the shattered cup, saying,
"It was time for your cup to die."
- Traditional Zen Koan

If I had no sense of humor,
I would long ago have committed suicide.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Only good comes from being honest and true.
Only harm and suffering come from falsehood.
It doesn't always feel as if good comes from truth and honesty,
but, in the long run, it does.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

It doesn't matter how long my hair is
or what color my skin is
or whether I'm a woman or a man.
- John Lennon

The Moon Cannot Be Stolen:
A thief entered the little hut of a Zen Master,
but discovered there was nothing to steal.
The Zen Master discovered the thief.
"You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler,
"and you should not return empty-handed.
Please take my clothes as a gift."
The thief was bewildered,
but he took the clothes and slunk away.
The Zen Master sat naked, watching the moon.
"Poor fellow," he mused,
"I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon."
- Traditional Zen Koan

Relax. Take a day off.
Go for a long silent walk in the woods.
The world will still be there tomorrow -
as good and as bad as ever.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

In the long history of humankind (and animal-kind, too)
those who learned to collaborate and
improvise most effectively have prevailed.
- Charles Darwin

The highest result of education is tolerance.
Long ago men fought and died for their faith;
but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage, -
the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren
and their rights of conscience.
- Helen Keller

I think we dream so we don't have to be apart for so long.
If we're in each other's dreams, we can be together all the time.
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)

So long as the memory of certain
beloved friends lives in my heart,
I shall say that life is good.
- Helen Keller

Millions long for immortality
who don't know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
- Susan Ertz

My biggest dream is that my words will inspire heart,
hope and personal responsibility in people around the globe
long after my feet in these shoes aren't walking the planet.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Take a long walk alone in the woods -
leave the cellphone and music player at home.
Your whole BEing will appreciate it.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Part of our essential humanity is paying respect to what God gave us
and what will be here a long time after we're gone.
- William J. Clinton

The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon,
but that we wait so long to begin it.
- Anonymous

It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person
to reconcile himself to the idea that
after all God will not help him
- H. L. Mencken

I don't care what anybody says about me
as long as it isn't true.
- Truman Capote

It takes discipline and compassion
to awaken the divine in ourselves long enough
to recognize the divine in another.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon.
We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask.
She has long ago taken her resolution.
- Henry David Thoreau

So long as you have courage and a sense of humor,
it is never too late to start life afresh.
- Freeman Dyson

Today is the right day to do
what you have long wanted to do.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Life is not about perfection -
or a quest for perfection.
Life is about enjoying what we have -
for as long as we have it.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

For once you have tasted flight
you will walk the earth
with your eyes turned skywards,
for there you have been
and there you will long to return.
- Leonardo da Vinci

The cost of a thing is the amount
of what I will call life
which is required to be exchanged for it,
immediately or in the long run.
- Henry David Thoreau

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Wisdom Quotes